Four Barrel removes questionable wording from its website

A customer at Four Barrel Coffee, after its window-display name was crossed out by employees, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif.

A customer at Four Barrel Coffee, after its window-display name was...

Sometime during the last two tumultuous months at Four Barrel — during which the San Francisco coffee company was embroiled in a sexual harassment lawsuit that forced the exit of its founder and decimated its previously robust wholesale business — a problematic phrase appeared at the bottom of its website.

Under the Four Barrel logo and the phrase “all rightsreserved” were three more words: “All wrongs reversed.”

Less than 30 minutes after The Chronicle reached out for comment following negative reactions on Twitter Thursday afternoon, the phrase disappeared from the site.

Did Four Barrel implement and quickly erase a new slogan acknowledging its recent past while declaring that it had solved problems surrounding its alleged toxic workplace culture?

Chronicle requests for comments from Four Barrel co-owners Jodi Geren and Tal Mor about the phrase went unanswered. Eventually a spokesperson for Four Barrel’s high-powered crisis team Sitrick and Company, the same folks who represented film mogul Harvey Weinstein, provided an explanation, albeit a curious one.

Here’s what the Chronicle was told: Four Barrel’s website is designed by the Portland-based company Needmore Designs. Its websites always have the phrase “All wrongs reversed,” according to the spokesperson. It apparently looked like a Four Barrel slogan because after the company removed its social media icons last month, the two sentences somehow shifted under the vacant space below the company’s name, the spokesperson said.

In the Four Barrel lawsuit, which was settled two weeks after being filed, former employees described being sexually harassed by Four Barrel founder Jeremy Tooker. At a company party in 2015, he allegedly sexually assaulted an employee in a hotel. While Tooker was at the helm, women who complained about his behavior were ostracized or fired, according to the lawsuit.

Though Tooker left the company, Four Barrel remains partially under the same leadership that, in court documents, was accused of doing little to address harassment complaints from its employees.

Four Barrel changed its name a few days into the lawsuit fallout as a response to public outcry. Roughly a week later after it settled the sexual harassment lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, the company dropped its new moniker and went back to being Four Barrel. Its owners once said that “Four Barrel died” with Tooker’s exit. With the lawsuit gone, they brought it back to life.

If the phrase were to return to the Four Barrel site, perhaps it should be posed as a query, not statement: “All wrongs reversed?”

Kandace Brigleb of Needmore Designs, the company that constructed Four Barrel’s current website, spoke with the Chronicle about the phrasing on the coffee roaster’s homepage that drew attention on social media during International Women’s Day.

Brigleb told the Chronicle the phrase “All wrongs reversed” was placed on the site when it was originally constructed. She said it was a reference to the independent indie rock record label Matador Records out of New York.

Brigleb said Four Barrel has complete control of its layout.

"We haven’t worked on the site since it launched,” she said

The phrase “All wrongs reversed” was removed from the site on Thursday.